Seen and Unseen
by vanillafluffy
Summary: Part 1, Bobby has a visitor. 2, Ellen strikes a deal. 3, Sam witnesses a bar fight. 4, Dean makes a mistake. 5, Nancy gets help. 6, Sam does a good deed. 7, Dean has questions for their guest. The shocking conclusion is now up!
1. Bobby

Characters from Supernatural are property of people and corporations who are not me, and with whom I am not affiliated in any way. Likewise, I intend no copyright infringement by quoting The Lizard King. Nancy McGill is mine; for more about her and John Winchester, see _The Girl From Cassadaga_ and _The End of an Era_. Feedback is love.

**Seen and Unseen**

**Seen -- Bobby Singer**

It's early enough that the mist hasn't burned off yet. Bobby Singer knocks back a half-pot of coffee before he goes outside to start parting out that old Pontiac and sees her sitting on a stack of balding Michelins. She's huddled into an old jacket, a duffle bag at her feet, shivering in the early morning chill. She appears harmless enough; a mousy blonde, not exactly his idea of centerfold material. He glances around the yard---no vehicle in sight, and he's a half-mile from the main road----eight from town. "Can I help you, ma'am?" He's got two knives and a .22 pistol on him, so if she tries anything funny, the joke will be on her.

"I was hoping I could buy that truck from you." She nods her head toward the gleaming ride that John Winchester's boys asked him to sell for them, and if Bobby was wary before, now he's sure there's something going on. He's mentioned the truck to a couple folks on the hunter's grapevine, but she doesn't look like any hunter he's ever seen.

No real hunter would ever let themselves be seen as vulnerable, but this woman is a poster child for having her defenses down. There are plum-hued circles under her light-green eyes---it looks like she hasn't slept in days---and she holds herself with an effort, hurting, or maybe just exhausted. No weapons that he can see; she's suspiciously harmless.

"Sure, let me just go get the keys, get her started and show you you're getting your money's worth." At her nod, he saunters back into the house. When he returns, he has the keys---plus a full carton of salt and an old squeeze bottle full of holy water. She rolls her eyes at the sight of the paraphernalia in his hands, and doesn't try to pretend she doesn't know what he has in mind. She's more resigned than offended.

"Here?" she asks, standing away from the truck and the tires, giving him plenty of room to pour the circle around her. "Spiritus malignos," she begins her voice hoarse, "qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo---"

"I don't need any help from the likes of you!" Bobby Singer snaps. Little Miss Smarty-Pants thinks she's gonna teach him how to cast out demons? Up close, she's a little older than he first thought, fortyish, but he's been hunting since she was still playing with dolls. She shrugs, tucks her hands into her armpits, and waits politely until he concludes the exorcism. Nothing happens; there's no manifestation, no fireworks, no excuse to squirt her with Father Sullivan's Best Blessing Sauce...

They get down to business: the truck. He's got some latitude as far as the price goes; he'd just as soon get it out of here, because seeing it makes him think of John, and reminds him that no one lasts forever, even the ones who should, and one of these days, it'll be his turn to go. Then, too, sooner or later, Dean and Sam will come back through here, and they aren't gonna want to see it, either. They'll need money---hunters always need money---and he won't turn down any halfway reasonable offer, even if he doesn't much care for the source.

Her counter-offer, when he names a price, isn't quite reasonable enough to suit him, although the word "cash" does emerge from her lips. Finally, she sighs, and says, "Maybe you'd consider taking part of it in services?"

"You're not my type," he guffaws. "Or maybe you do windows? Gonna vacuum my house in a little French maid outfit?"

"I can locate something for you. Maybe you've lost or misplaced an item of value...?" She glances toward the house. "I'll find it for you."

Lost or misplaced...there's something Bobby hasn't seen in quite a while, and it's small enough to be like looking for a you-know-what you-know-where. If Little Miss Smarty-Pants can find it, he'll give her the keys to the truck, the keys to the city, and maybe even the key to his heart. "Okay, I'll bite. I'm missing a crucifix on a gold chain. It's about so big," He holds his thumb and forefinger an inch and a half apart, "and the chain is---or was---twenty inches long."

Her eyes are pale, almost colorless with faint green tinge like an old-fashioned glass Coke bottle. "From your momma's rosary," she replies, nodding. "You've got something else of hers I can hold? It would help."

How in the world did she know that? She's absolutely right, and he treasures that little cross, not because it's pure gold, but it's one of very few material things that Bobby has to remember his mother by. He shakes on the deal and takes her inside, finds an old gravy boat that's been stuck up in a kitchen cabinet for four decades---Momma died when he was overseas, and he and Daddy never did try to recreate her four-course Sunday dinners. Then he watches as she cradles it in her hands, stroking it like it was Aladdin's lamp instead of a cheap piece of Jewel-T china. She wanders around the kitchen for a few minutes, shakes her head, goes into what used to be the dining room.

"Rosary," she says aloud as she progresses into the living room. "Hmm. Ave Maria---" and she begins praying in a soft voice as she threads her way through stacks of books. So the exorcism wasn't necessary, he thinks, hearing the quiet litany. Better safe than sorry. Propped against the door frame, he tracks her halting progress. His visitor bends over, and from where she's standing, she's over near his recliner, probably rummaging through his old _National Geographics_. She straightens up briefly, and something glitters under the 60-watt light. He catches it automatically, and there's his gold chain. The jump ring is bent into a C-shape; that's how it came off.

"Amen!" she exclaims, a note of triumph in her voice, and makes her way over to where he waits. The sight of the little crucifix in her hand brings a lump to his throat. Bobby has others, but this one makes him feel safer than any of the rest, because it was touched by his mother's unwavering faith. The whole search only took the woman about forty minutes, and he's been fretting about that crucifix since spring, at least.

Her right nostril is bleeding, a fat crimson worm creeping toward her upper lip. She blots it with the paper towel he offers her, and pulls a bottle of generic aspirin from one of many pockets. Bobby's not sure he's ever seen anyone that pale who wasn't undead, but it's daylight now---a glance out the kitchen window shows the mist is lifting---and the undead don't bleed like that. Plus, he saw her breath fogging the air while he was performing the exorcism. She isn't undead, she isn't possessed, and she's just given him back something he values, but he doesn't take to the woman, doesn't want her around for longer than she has to be.

"That's how come I don't do this much," she tells him, eyes closed, rubbing her forehead between her eyebrows. "The nosebleeds aren't that bad, but the headaches are killers. Now then---" She reaches into another pocket, pulls out a roll of green and tosses it onto the kitchen table. "Count that."

It's all in hundreds, worn, not crispy, not sequential. She may have robbed a bank, but she's not a counterfeiter. He hands over the keys and the pink slip. "It's yours."

"Much obliged." She heads outside and slings her duffle into the truckbed with a brief wave in his direction.

Bobby observes her struggle to get up into the cab. John had long legs---he was five or six inches taller than Our Lady of the Rosary, who makes it into the driver's seat, then promptly leans over and pukes out the door. She sits there for a little while afterward, and Bobby doesn't go over to her, doesn't offer help, because really, he wants her creepy little spoon-bending ass out of his dooryard. He's relieved when she starts up the big truck and eases it toward the driveway. That's one thing he won't have to worry about any more. He's got a decent wad of cash for John's boys, and now maybe he can get some work done.

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**Unseen -- Musical Kharma**

Her head is going to implode. At moments like this, Nancy McGill wishes it would pop like a balloon and get it over with. Except that wouldn't really solve her problems, would it?---just create a whole new set. Upchucking the aspirin ten minutes after she'd taken them didn't help, either.

Sound carries a long way, so she keeps going until she's back to the two-lane highway, then gives it another couple of miles for good measure, because the engine in this thing has a rumble to it that can probably be heard from that far off. One thing you could say about Big John, he had fine taste in automobiles. This is the closest thing to a new vehicle she's ever had.

When she finally pulls to the side of the road and cuts the engine, it's a few minutes before she has enough energy to investigate. There's nothing up under the visors---Nancy didn't expect anything, but you never know---the cab is immaculate; only a few dusty footprints on the floormats mar its pristine interior. The glovebox---which if you think about it, is a damn silly thing to call it---nobody's used gloves for motoring since the days the conveyance was called a horseless carriage---holds a couple of correctly-folded roadmaps, a grease pencil, a cube of blue chalk, a handful of restaurant salt packets and a matchbook from a place called Harvelle's Roadhouse.

The seat-pocket on the passenger side has a _Road Atlas of America_---this year's---a mostly-used can of WD-40, and a bootleg CD labeled "Greatest Hits". No clue as to whose hits...she'll get to that later.

Reluctantly, Nancy slides out of the cab and clambers up into the bed. There's a compartment behind the cab, running from side to side, painted the same glossy black as the rest of the truck. There's no lock through the hasp; either Singer or John's kids have been through it already...but she lifts the lid anyway. There's a beat-up old sleeping bag stuffed in there, something blue and green---she snatches it up and clutches it with suddenly trembling hands. She recognizes the ragged flannel shirt---she stitched up that rip right there one evening while John was telling her about the knife that wasn't a samurai sword...she almost dumps her duffle into the space and starts out for Harvelle's Roadhouse right then, but she has a methodical streak, but when she digs a little deeper, it pays off.

It's what's left of a tee shirt. Judging by the stains surrounding the parallel rips, something clawed John pretty good. Nancy holds the shredded cotton jersey up and knows John must've had a couple new scars on the left side of his ribcage. Because it _is _John's shirt, she knows, definitely his blood, and that's a better yield from the truck than she hoped for. That cast-off piece of clothing is worth every nickel she spent on the truck, worth the nosebleed and the headache, which is still a ball-buster. At least now she's got wheels to replace her station wagon, which died the day before yesterday on the outskirts of a town whose name she's already forgotten.

Getting back on the road, she slides the CD into the player on the dash, then smiles despite her headache. The Doors...

_Yeah, keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel  
Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel  
Yeah, we're goin' to the Roadhouse  
We're gonna have a real  
Good time ---_


	2. Ellen

**Seen -- Ellen Harvelle **

In the twenty-five years that she's been running the Roadhouse, Ellen Harvelle has learned to size up her customers. The woman who comes through the door a little before three in the afternoon isn't anyone familiar to her, but Ellen reads weariness in the way she carries herself as she walks slowly over to the bar. A hunter she doesn't know? Could be, or maybe she's a hunter's woman, hoping to track down her missing man...gone without a trace. She's luckier than many of her sisters; at least she knows what happened to Bill. Some hunters lead double lives; their families don't know where they go or why they don't come back.

"What can I get for you?" she asks the newcomer, who's looking around the bar as if walls could talk. Dishwater blonde hair is pulled back in a braid, and it looks to Ellen like somewhere along the line, somebody broke her nose and it set with a bump to it.

The woman fishes a dollar bill out of her pocket and drops it on the bar. "Will that get me a co'cola?" she wants to know. Her accent has a Southern tone to it---Bill's folks were from Georgia, and they called Cokes "co'cola" too.

"Compliments of the house," says Ellen, setting the plastic cup on the bar a moment later. Whoever this gal is---she's within a few years of Ellen's age, not some sassy young thing who thinks hunting is a glamourous business because she's seen too much Buffy---she looks like she needs a drink; if all she wants is soda-pop, that's not gonna break the bank. "Anything I can help you with?"

"Maybe you can." There's a pause as the thin-faced woman sips the fizzy liquid. "I'm a bit low on funds at the moment...most of my money is going into my gas tank right now." Ellen's immediately wary---she doesn't give loans to hunters, ever---and those are the people she knows. "Maybe we could make a trade? I'll work in your kitchen this evening if you'll set up the house so I can make a toast."

Ellen thinks it over for a moment, and the other woman doesn't rush her. That's one she's never heard before. There's no telling how many orders the kitchen will get---the Georgia peach might only have to cook for her and Jo and Ash---some nights, there might only be one or two folks around at midnight---or it could be a madhouse. Hunters are as likely to do their partying on a Wednesday as a Saturday, depending on what they've killed or are trying to forget.

"What's your name?" the bar owner asks, wondering if the blonde actually knows her way around a kitchen, or if it's some kind of scam. Still, it's a unique proposition, and there's something dignified about the woman in spite of her worn castoff clothes---and Ellen knows sometimes there are toasts people need to make, things they need to stand and declare and chase with firewater to get them out of their system.

"Nancy McGill. Yes, I can work a deep-fryer, no, I don't have typhoid, and if you want me to down a shot of holy water to prove I'm just me, let's get on with it."

Ellen Harvelle grins at her dry tone. "You do come to the point," she comments, but doesn't let herself be disarmed by the Southern woman's frankness, setting up another glass with three inches of liquid from one of the "special" bottles of mixers. Ellen watches as Nancy gulps it without flinching. "I guess we have a deal."

They shake on it. Ellen tries to puzzle out where she's heard the name McGill before, when the front door is yanked open, and Jo bounds in, looking around wildly. "Where is he, Momma? Where is he?" She sounds so upset that her mother has a hand on the sawed-off under the bar, certain something is after her.

"What in the world is going on, Joanna Beth?"

Jo points toward the parking lot. "That's John Winchester's truck out there."

"That's my truck, young lady," Nancy says, as Jo stares at her. She smiles without humor, providing a glimpse of uneven teeth. "Bought previously owned from a fella named Bobby Singer."

Ellen's met Bobby, knows he and John went way back, knows Dean and Sam have gotten help from him since John's death. Hell, plenty of people drive used vehicles. Just because Ellen has a beef with the previous owner is no reason to give this gal a rough time. She's seen that big fancy-ass truck of John's; the woman wasn't lying about her money going into the gas tank. Which begs the question of just who and what Nancy McGill is---a hunter...or someone on the edge of it all, like herself? Maybe the toast she wants to make will clarify the matter.

It turns out to be a much busier-than-average night. Everyone comes in hungry; the kitchen is slammed, and Ellen's glad for the unexpected help. Nancy McGill knows her stuff, alright---even with the press of constant orders, the burgers are juicy, the fries crisp, and she overhears a none-too-sober hunter tell Jo that if she's the one who cooked the chicken, he'll marry her.

"No, but I killed it," Jo retorts, one hand on the hilt of her knife, and walks away as the guy's friends laugh at him.

As midnight approaches, Nancy emerges from the kitchen and Ellen starts pouring drinks. More drinks than she expected to pour, because it's been quite a while since the house was this full. She doesn't mind; it's just too bad that she can't afford to offer the McGill woman a full-time job, because damn, the woman can cook, and could bring in more business like this.

The room gets quiet as Nancy steps forward with her glass raised---she's requested two fingers of bourbon in her cup, and a "co'cola" chaser waiting on the bar. After eight hours of cooking, she looks more gaunt and worn-out than ever. Her hair is matted with grease; her thin, angular face shiny with oil.

"For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand," intones Nancy. "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith."

Like someone walking over her grave...Ellen's spine stiffens. This doesn't sound good, for all it's Scripture. Does Nancy have some kind of death wish?

"Being a hunter isn't an easy road," continues the evening's cook. "It's about sacrifice. It's about offering to save the world from things no rational person would take on. It's lonely, scary and probably fatal in the long run. Like they say, it's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it. Here's to fighting the good fight, and keeping the faith." She knocks back the bourbon, and there's an approving buzz from the room. Ellen isn't so sure.

"You want to tell me what that was about?" she asks later, after the last stragglers have gone off to wherever it is they go. She still doesn't know where Nancy fits in.

"John Winchester was a friend of mine," says the blonde, unloading the dishwasher stacking clean plates on the shelf. "But John being John, I figured if I was to toast him by name, things might get a little loud. The man sure could piss people off when he set his mind to it." True enough. Reviewing the crowd present tonight, Ellen can think of a couple people who'd sooner turn down free booze than drink to John...including herself.

"You sent a card to him one time," she remembers, the elusive memory surfacing of a square envelope with 'N.L. McGill' printed in the return corner. "From somewhere in Florida, wasn't it?" The 'card' was a photo of a couple buzzards; a word bubble had been drawn above one of them, and it read 'Patience, hell---I'm gonna kill something!' "John passed that around. He laughed his ass off about it. So, what brings you up our way?"

Nancy makes a palms up gesture. "I guess I needed...closure," she says, and hesitates. "I don't suppose you know where he was laid to rest? I'd like to pay my respects."

"You don't think those boys were gonna put their daddy in the ground, do you?" Ellen shakes her head. "Oh, hell no---not knowing what's out there like they do. They lit him up and salted the ashes---"

"Did I hear my name?" her helper pipes up from the doorway.

"No, Ash---I was talking about Sam and Dean burning John's body."

"Oh, yeah. There was a big to-do in the White River paper about the body going missing from the local hospital."

"So it's not like there's a gravestone with his name carved on it, or anything like that," Ellen concludes, and Nancy nods. "Look, you're all in. I've got a spare bed..." She's almost surprised when the woman takes her up on it---she sees traces of the same stubborn pride John used to display, talk about your birds of a feather---but Nancy totes in a duffle that looks like it's gonna pull her over in a minute, and thanks her for her hospitality.

When Ellen gets up the next morning, Nancy's gone, and the bed doesn't look like it's been slept in.

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**Unseen -- Rolling the Bones**

Arriving at White River at sunrise, Nancy wants to take the timing as a good omen, but right now, she's too damn tired. She washed off last night's cooking grease, ducked out of Harvelle's, and drove all night When did she last have a decent night's sleep? Not since September, for sure, when the whole ordeal started.

There's nothing like an out-of-body experience in Hell to make your life go crazy, she thinks grimly. She was sitting at her kitchen table, cutting up vegetables for stew, when suddenly, she couldn't breathe. It was like having a car parked on her chest, then she found herself in writhing darkness with no boundaries, a place of filth and corpse-stench, where the shrill sound of a universe in torment was as oppressive as the miasma of foulness.

John was there; she screamed his name and waved her arms and nothing she could do penetrated the indifference of this terrible realm. Then something else stood between her and John, something only vaguely human in shape, and it saw her, its yellow eyes flashing with amusement as she tried vainly to get to John's side. "Puny, soft, futile creature," it sneered. "He's mine, now." It swatted at her, like brushing away an annoying fly, and Nancy found herself sprawled on the green linoleum, paring knife and a half-scraped carrot nearby.

Panic set in, and as soon as she could move, she crawled to the phone and started calling everyone she could think of for news. It took days before she got confirmation of what she already knew: John Winchester was dead.

Random details drifted in as she grieved; a car wreck---they got T-boned by a semi, John and the boys---the trucker who hit them was a man with a spotless safety record during his twenty-five year career---they were registered at the hospital under the alias "McGillicuddy"---the oldest boy almost didn't make it, but he came out of his coma just before his daddy died---one of the hospital maintainence workers had some kind of seizure around the same time---the hunters and fellow travelers she talked to each had one or two pieces of the puzzle; they didn't see the shape of it the way she did.

Which is why she's here, in this overgrown field where there's a patch of scorched earth.

On her hands and knees, Nancy works her way toward the center of the burned earth in a clockwise spiral. The closer she gets to the epicenter, the more slowly she moves and the more careful she becomes. Her blackened fingers are numb with cold; sometimes she picks up bits of debris and holds them to her cheek, because her hands are so cold she can't sense them properly. They're always rocks, or carbonized branches from the funeral pyre.

No one sees the mad-looking sight she presents: a hollow-cheeked woman with coal smudges on her face, crawling around in the middle of a freezing field at daybreak. No one hears her mutterings, pleading with a universe that seems intent on ignoring her. So tired. She's been at this for how long now? She's gotten over feeling cold, but she can't get away from how weary she is...she'll close her eyes, just for a minute...maybe if she rests for a little while, she won't be so out of it and she'll be able to find something...she sags against the ground, almost motionless.

Nancy shifts just a smidgen, and her bare right wrist comes into contact with something that looks like just another blackened stone. The nearly flat rock is less than an inch thick and about as big as the bowl of a serving spoon, and she's suddenly wide awake. This time, when she touches the relic to her face, it resonates with a familiar energy. She regards it with something akin to awe, and wonders what it was---a shoulder blade, a chunk of pelvis? Salted or not doesn't matter to her. That's just a way of negating negative energy, and won't affect what she wants it for.

There's a rawhide cord around her neck, holding a red flannel pouch against her ribcage. Carefully, she deposits her find into the little bag and tucks it back beneath the soot-greyed front of her jacket. She ambles back to the truck with more energy than anyone who'd seen her just a few minutes ago would've given her credit for.

Her labors have earned her a shower and some rest, if only she can sleep.

_The time to hesitate is through  
No time to wallow in the mire  
Try now we can only lose  
And our love become a funeral pyre  
Come on baby, light my fire--- _


	3. Sam

**Seen -- Sam Winchester**

It's a joint called Eddie's, on a back road to Nowhere Special, USA. It isn't a hunter's bar; but it just so happens that three of the four people occupying it this afternoon are hunters. One of them is Sam Winchester, another is his older brother Dean, and the third hunter is someone Sam knows slightly from Harvelle's Roadhouse, a man named Steve Sweeney. Ash told him that the Sweeney's nickname was Psycho, 'cause he's not too tightly wrapped, but at the moment, he and Dean are peaceably talking shop, about the best multi-purpose loads, and how Steve's got a system for combining salt and silver that won't corrode the silver. He carries his gear in an old canvas satchel, and he's got it open on the bar, a couple cartridges out, showing them off.

The bartender is over in the far corner near the heater, oblivious, TV turned up loud while he watches a daytime drama. Sam picks at the corner of the label on his bottle and yawns. It's only about two-thirty in the afternoon, but the sky is the color of pewter, and it looks like they're in for nasty weather.

Two hours ago, Steve was having a helluva time against a poltergeist when Sam and Dean showed up. The guy is showing his thanks with a couple rounds of drinks. Although if Sam's any judge, Steve's about to get hustled at pool by Dean, who has no qualms about drinking a guy's beer and beating him out of his bankroll. He may have to nag Dean to get him out of here; trying to find a motel during a blizzard is not Sam's idea of a good time and neither is being stranded in a dump like this.

He's the first one to see the woman enter. There's a mop of dark blonde hair visible above a battered olive drab parka four sizes too big for her---it reminds Sam of one he outgrew when he was about fifteen, definitely NOT a ladies' garment---and she's looking in their direction, probably hoping to catch the bartender's attention.

Dean, who'll notice any woman, anywhere, unless he's in a coma, gives her a two-second glance and dismisses her. He likes babes, and this lady is too old and worn-looking to qualify. Steve cuts his gaze that way, and cusses.

"You damn crazy bitch," he snarls as the newcomer moves over to where they're standing. "Don't you know when to give up?"

"No, Stevie-boy, you're the one who's supposed to be giving it up." There's a jagged edge to her voice. "We had an agreement. You shook on it, and I held up my end. I've had to follow you around for three weeks trying to get what's mine, but it ends now."

"What's going on here?" Dean asks, at the same time Sam says, "Can't we talk about this?" because the blonde in the parka is glaring at Psycho Steve through narrowed eyes, and Sam, who knows pissed off when he sees it, has a feeling this is about to turn ugly.

"Give it here, Steve," she says, holding out her right hand, palm up. "We can still do this like civilized people. Don't make this any worse than it has to be."

"Or what?" Sweeney mocks her. "You'll stamp your feet and pout?"

She leans forward, nose-to-nose with him, warning in her tone, "Or I will stamp _you _like a postcard, and mail you straight to _Memphis_. I don't think you'd care too much for _Memphis_, not on a day like this..."

To Sam's surprise, Psycho seems taken aback by her threat. "You don't---you're trying to mess with my head!" he accuses.

"You don't want to try me," she advises him. "You taken a look outside lately? We're in for _snow_..." She draws the last word out like a moaning wind, and Steve snaps. He shoves her away, hard. The blonde stumbles back, catches herself on a chair, and pivots.

In his twenty-three years, Sam Winchester has been in his share of bar-room brawls, and he watches now with reluctant admiration as the woman whips around, smashing the chair legs against Sweeney's shins, taking him down. In what seems to be one continuous movement, she's released the chair, which skitters to rest over near the door, and dropped onto him, pinning him. Her left hand is at his throat, pressing against his windpipe, and she's drawn a Bowie knife from a back sheath, the feminine Lady Crocodile Dundee model, to go with her jacket. The business end is now between Steve's thighs, and Sam feels himself twitch in sympathy.

Dean starts forward, and without looking up, she growls. "Don't. This is a private matter." To Sweeney, she says, "I've tried to be nice about this, and you've done nothing but try to take advantage of me. I'm over being nice. Are you gonna give me that knife?"

"Hell, no, you stupid freak bitch!"

"Memphis, in the snow...but it wasn't the middle of the afternoon, was it? No, it was the middle of the night---"

"Shut up!" Psycho Steve yells, but she doesn't. She keeps talking in a conversational tone, never taking her eyes from his, even when he's avoiding her gaze.

"Twenty-four degrees, and with the wind _howling _along, it was more like twenty _below_. And _oh_, _how _the _snow _came _down_..." The way she says it draws out the sounds of the 'ohs' and the 'oohs' and 'ows', and with the wind is picking up outside, her voice blends with the oncoming storm.

"Nothing but darkness and _snow _falling and the sound of your tires spinning, spinning, spinning. _Cold _in the car, _oh so cold_..." She purrs the words, and Sam listens wide-eyed. Dean has stopped trying to break it up, he's blinking at the husky tone of her words like he's hearing a bedtime story. "It was even colder outside. No signal on your _phone_, no one to hear you leaning on the horn...at least, nobody _human_."

Sam flinches and Dean starts. Psycho tries to buck her off him then, but she bears down on his throat until he starts coughing. "Ready to give me what's mine? No? There's no place _lone_lier than an industrial park in two feet of _snow_..." And those 'ohs' are getting longer and more urgent, and Steve's face has the look of a man caught in a nightmare, prey, not hunter. "And all you want is to go back to your hotel, where there's _no snow_---"

"Take it!" he screams. "Take it! Just stop it! Make it stop!"

The blonde doesn't turn, but pitches her voice at Dean. "Reach into Mr. Sweeney's bag, if you would, and hand him that roll of tan suede."

"Take it, just take it!" Steve is hysterical, nearly weeping from whatever terror she's conjured up.

"It doesn't work that way. You're going to hand it to me of your own free will. Nice and easy." Dean cautiously removes a length of soft suede from the bag. "That's it," the blonde says, still looking down at Sweeney. "He hands it to you, you hand it to me, your oath is satisfied, and you're free to go." She's sliding the knife back into the scabbard between her shoulder-blades and extends her hand to take the package that Dean hands to Sweeney.

Before releasing Steve's throat, she rests the bundle on his chest and unrolls it. Inside the yellowish suede is a knife or short sword, Asian by the look of it. The blonde looks away from the fallen hunter for the first time, and the corners of her mouth lift upward. "There we go," she croons, rolling it back up. "It could've been that easy three weeks ago, but you had to be macho, didn't you?" She stands with one swift motion, backing up three paces so Psycho can't make a grab for her.

He doesn't even try, just grabs his bag off the bar and bolts for the door, loose rounds rolling along the surface in his wake. He stands for a moment, holding the door half-open, wind howling loudly just beyond, and blusters at the blonde: "Go to hell!"

"I'll send you a postcard," she retorts as the door swings closed behind him. She looks Sam and Dean over, still smiling.

"Hello, boys. I'm Nancy McGill. How's life treating you?

0000

0000

**Unseen -- Communing With the Light**

Locked safely in her cheap motel room, protected by salt and wards, Nancy unrolls the suede again. Now she can appreciate the craftsmanship of the blade without distraction. It's a sleek, beautiful, deadly thing, and she intends to see it used for the purpose for which it was forged. "Demon-Killer," she murmurs, stroking the engraved kanji on the hilt with a reverent finger.

There's an improvised altar on the top of the bureau---the cheap formica covered with John's worn flannel shirt as an altarcloth. The space hosts a blue votive, a wilting convenience store rosebud, a miniature bottle of scotch, and a piece of blue sodalite the size of a hazelnut. Nancy arranges the blade on its plaid cushion, just so, and adds the old Bowie knife John gave her way back when. It's nowhere near as sleek as Demon-Killer, but any little bit of mojo she can think of to throw in can't hurt, and John carried that knife for a lot of years.

Unbuttoning the top two buttons of her threadbare shirt, she loosens the drawstrings on the medicine bag and rummages among its contents, careful not to dislodge anything. The chunk of charred bone is the weighiest thing in there, slightly bigger than the Roadhouse matchbook. The lock of dark hair, tied with a thread of silk, is featherweight. At the bottom of the pouch, beneath the bone-relic, is a linked silver chain with a religious medal---St. Michael the Archangel---strung on it.

Nancy fishes out the chain and the matchbook. She sets the latter beside the votive. Undoing the clasp of the chain, she twines it through the perforations on the guard of the blade, wrapping it in and out, until it won't shorten any more. The silver medal is lodged just under the guard, where the sword-wielder's hand will rest against it.

Lighting a candle with one of the matches, she extinguishes the overhead light in the room. She kneels on the floor in front of her humble shrine---it's the prayer and the intent that matter, she knows, not the setting. Nancy prays to St. Michael, patron saint of warriors, wondering with distant whimsy, if the blade from a far-off shore has ever heard the like of Latin before.

_The first time Nancy McGill sees an angel, she's nine years old, and Nona is pruning her rose trellis and singing softly nearby. It's a melody familiar to the girl, and she hums along softly, because it sounds so much nicer when her grandmother sings it. _

_It's early on a Saturday morning---she slipped out of the house before her brother and sister got up for their habitual squabbling over who gets to pick the cartoons and who's having which cereal---and now she's here in her favorite place in the whole world with her favorite person in the whole world, and it's going to be a pretty day. The sunlight is as soft as a kiss, and she isn't too cold or too warm, and Nancy wishes she could stay in this moment forever, because it's just so perfect._

_You can, something tells her. It isn't the inner voice she's always heard, but it isn't someone talking to her, either. It's music, a song, but it wasn't Nona singing it. She looks around, and just behind her right shoulder is a brightness. The only thing Nancy can think of to liken it to is when Glinda floats away like a soap bubble after she talks to Dorothy in Oz, but this isn't round, or a bubble, it's just...bright. Not hurt-your-eyes like a flashbulb bright; more like cut-glass making a rainbow when the light hits it just so. It's white, but it's colorful white, and for a moment, she just gazes at it, enraptured. _

You can always call on this memory if you need it_, the voice tells her calmly, _or on me_. The sparkling sound meets the shining light, and it pulses, fanning her with a motionless wind and a sense of joy so fierce that tears twinkle down her cheeks. _

_That was an angel, Nancy thinks with wonderment. An angel just came and talked to _me

Almost forty years later, she focuses on that memory, on that beautiful light-sound. She's in a meditative reverie so profound that only the trembling flame reflected in the polished bronze blade has any meaning for her. The dancing votive flickers. The glow seems to expand, to become brighter, until the dingy room is lit with radiance that can be seen clearly through the draperies in the snow-covered parking lot beyond. The candle-fire is now unwavering, yet there's a tremendous rush of sound as if great wings are sweeping the air.

Mindful of her manners, Nancy greets the Being she's summoned with all due deference. She thanks St. Michael for responding, and when she feels approval, takes a deep breath, and says she has a petition to make. It isn't easy to explain what she needs in Latin, but Latin is the venerable language of ancient rites and ceremonies. There's a formality to it, to match the gravity of her request. English would be too common.

It's not easy to speak of Hell in the presence of an angel. only with the greatest effort can Nancy make herself form the words. A soul is in torment, she explains, the soul of a man who fought Evil for many years. She knows that Michael can't directly interfere with such things, but she needs help to right this greivous wrong.

BY DOING WHAT?

For the first time, Nancy puts her plan into words. She's studied a way to locate John, wherever he is. She'll go in...There, kill the demon and liberate John. It sounds decisive; kill the demon, as if John, who is a thousand times her superior as a hunter didn't dedicate half his life to that end! But he never had the right weapon...she recounts the history of the Demon-Killer, shows it to the Archangel, points out where she's affixed the holy medal to the hilt.

THIS, TOO, IS A WARRIOR'S WEAPON, pronounces the angel, surveying the old Bowie knife. I WILL SET MY BLESSING UPON THEM BOTH, THAT THEY CANNOT BE SEIZED FROM THEIR WIELDER BY FORCE.

"Thank you." The promise is a huge relief; if the demon could knock her aside so easily, it could just as easily snatch the weapon from her.

WHY DO YOU DO THIS? YOU RISK DESTROYING YOURSELF.

Nancy does her best to explain what John is to her. How, the first time she met him, spattered with the blood of evil-doers, she had the sense of a knight in tarnished armor, a bold conquistador, a crusader on a long journey, mad to some, but beneath it all, noble and dedicated and strong. Her faith in him has never faltered, and if that's what it takes, she'll sacrifice herself to give his soul the peace it deserves.

It's a test, she knows. If she can't stand up to an angel without flinching, what will happen when she's up against a demon? She draws herself up. "I thank you for blessing our weapons. All I ask is that if I can get John out, that you'll take charge of him. He's a warrior; you'll get on fine with him, you'll see. I just don't want him to be...lost." Her voice cracks on the last word, and Nancy fights unshed tears. She hasn't wept for John; tears would be soft, would make him truly dead and beyond her help and she will not accept that while there is breath in her body.

BE STRONG.

Peace fills her, her resolve is strengthened. There is no sense of time; when the Archangel departs to etheric realms, the candle has long since burned out.

Nancy gropes for the light switch. For the first time in months, she has a sense of hope. She's that much closer to her goal. Not all the way---there's more to do yet---but her angelic guide has not tried to dissuade her from her course. Taking up the blade, she finds its strength has increased. Her hand tingles where it touches the silver medal. The consecration by its maker made Demon-Killer powerful; even before St Michael's intervention, Nancy was aware of its implacable purpose. She secures her prize, tucks John's shirt away and smiles, an unsettling smile that John Winchester would recognize. Soft and puny? Not by a long shot. Compared to her plans for a rematch with that demon, Steve Sweeney got off light.

_Girl ya gotta love your man  
Take him by the hand  
Make him understand  
The world on you depends  
Our life will never end  
Gotta love your man, yeah  
Riders on the storm... _


	4. Dean

**Seen -- Dean Winchester**

"She's some kind of weirdo, Sam," Dean tells his brother as they're finishing dinner at the cafe across the road from the motel they're bunked at. He doesn't have to say who: they got to the motel as the woman from Eddie's Bar was leaving the front office with a set of keys, John's truck parked out front. Watching her scramble in and drive over to a unit had made him grit his teeth...Dad's truck without Dad was just...wrong.

"She's okay," Sam says with a shrug. "I thought the way she handled herself when Psycho shoved her was pretty cool."

"What's she doing with Dad's truck?"

"Bobby wired us the money a week ago," Sam reminds him. "So what? We asked him to sell it, remember?"

"I know that," Dean says, impatiently pushing away his empty plate. "But why did she buy Dad's truck, out of all the trucks out there? What was with that Jedi mind trick she pulled on Sweeney? What's the big deal with that samurai sword of his?"

"I don't know," answers Sam, who doesn't seem overly concerned by the coincidence. He's lingering over his meal as if it's fine cuisine instead of heartburn on a plate. "So she bought the truck from Bobby and she's got history with Sweeney. So what?"

"What about her history with Dad?" Dean belches---meatloaf with onions---and drums his fingers on the table. There are antacids in his duffle; tonight, he'll need them.

"What are you talking about?" Sam regards him, forehead furrowed in perplexity.

Dean smiles without humor. "While you were in the bathroom primping, Samantha, I called Ellen. She says this McGill broad was in there a week ago, and ordered a round for the house in Dad's memory. She used to send mail to him there. Sounds like there's some history to me."

Sam doesn't react to the jibe. "You think...her and Dad?"

At least his brother is listening to him. "Her? No way. Dad could do better that that," says Dean dismissively. "But that doesn't mean they didn't know each other. I don't remember anything about a Nancy in his journal, though, do you?"

"It's not exactly Dad's little black book," Sam points out. "He didn't put anything in there about the Roadhouse, either." He's finally finished his chicken-fried steak, and Dean wants out of the narrow booth. He's too jumpy to sit still any longer. His stomach is grumbling; the blue plate special was anything but.

"We'll have to go through it again when we get back to the room," Dean decides, sliding out down the bench. It's not like he thinks Dad was any kind of celibate after Mom died---he witnessed John making his moves on all kinds of ladies over the years, scamming them for everything from drinks or a tank of gas to better grades during parent-teacher conferences. He needs to know where Nancy McGill fits in. "'Cause, dude, this is too much of a stalkery coincidence to me."

The Impala is waiting by their room, because Dean hadn't gotten around to putting chains on, and there's been five inches of powder since they checked in an hour and a half ago. It doesn't show any signs of easing up any time soon, either.

"What the hell is that?" Dean grabs Sam's arm as they get closer to the half-circle of rooms around the parking lot. Most of the rooms are dark. A few show lights faintly visible behind drapes drawn against the chill wind outside.

One window glows with blue-white light, the pattern on the curtains a lighter shade of blue. It's lit up like someone's arc-welding in there.

"That's her room, in case you hadn't noticed." Even as Dean speaks, the light winks out, and he blinks, the after-image still seared blue into his retinas. "Still think there's nothing going on?"

"That was freaky," Sam admits as a much fainter light comes on.

"Let's go pay a call on Dad's old pal," says Dean, striding toward the room in question.

When the McGill woman opens the door, Dean sniffs. There's a faint fragrance in the room, some kind of air freshener or incense. "Nice to see you again," she says, and steps back to let them in. Her expression reminds him of a little jingle he heard back in childhood: "Never smile at a crocodile..." He hasn't thought of that in years.

"Is everything okay?" Sam asks her. "There was a weird light, we thought there might be a fire..."

"No fire," she says. "Not even any smoke."

Dean glances around for clues of what she's been up to. There, on the bureau is a blob of wax from a small scented candle, not enough to account for the light they saw, that's for sure. Near the wax is a smooth blue stone the size of a fat marble, a miniature bottle of booze and a rose that's seen better days. Some kind of altar, obviously, which begs the question of what she's been summoning.

"I was hoping I could get another look at that sword of yours," he says, fake polite smile pasted to his face. The roll of suede is visible over by an old duffle bag and a bedroll spread out beside the bed. Sam notices it, too.

"You know, they expect you to sleep in the beds," Sam says, tone teasing. "It doesn't cost extra."

She shrugs. "Bed's too soft," she says. "No big deal. At least the heater works." She looks over at Dean. "Be my guest."

In good light, the sword is much brighter than Dean remembers from Eddie's bar. The blade is bronze, and there's Japanese writing on the hilt, which reminds him of something. He has Dad's journal tucked under his jacket, and pulls it out to see if he can solve the nagging sense of having seen the symbols before. He hears her sudden intake of breath at the sight of the book, and fights an urge to hide it.

"You said you met Dad when?" Sam asks her. Points to you, bro. Keep her distracted, because I _know_ there's something in here...

"Bike Week, back in '94," she replies. "He was in town on business, and I was there feeling nostalgic. I used to be a Harley queen myself, back in the day...when I was about your age. Ran into him in a bar, literally, and we got to talking."

"He picked you up in a bar?" Dean is incredulous. Dad must've been drunk on his ass to hit on this sorry-looking dame.

The crocodile smile again. Creepy. "Kinda hard to say who picked up who," she answers. "Being Bike Week, you can't hardly find a motel room for any amount of money, so after he bought me lunch, I invited him home." Another shrug. "We kept in touch. He dropped in from time to time, when he was in the area."

Sam's asking her about Bike Week, but Dean stops paying attention, because there it is: a strip of paper with a rubbing of the engraved symbols on the hilt, and under the slip in John's bold scrawl is the notation: "Japanese sword, 16th century. Demon-Killer. In the possession of Steven Sweeney, who thinks it's a samurai sword."

Demon-Killer.

Dean doesn't think he's made a sound, and he knows damn well he has a good poker face, but when he looks up from the journal, the McGill woman is watching him. "Yeah," she says, although he hasn't uttered a word. "I know what it is."

"And what are you going to do with it?" he demands harshly.

"Do?" She smirks a little. "Maybe I'll lend it to those folks at the diner over yonder to help them cut that horsemeat meatloat of theirs." Dean feels his queasiness intensify all of a sudden, and tells himself it's the power of suggestion, nothing more---and he might even believe it, if he hadn't witnessed Psycho Steve reduced to incoherent begging.

That prompts a snicker from Sam. "You should've had the chicken-fried steak, like me," he tells Dean, as the older Winchester hastily wraps the sword in the supple suede again, trying not to think about his churning stomach.

"Right," says the McGill woman dryly, "because mad cow disease can take years to develop."

Sam gets a chuckle out of that, but Dean's uneasy stomach decides it's had enough. He drops the sword and bolts for the door, scrambling outside just in time to blow chunks in the snow. "Get away from me!" he snaps when Sam puts a hand on his shoulder. He straightens up slowly and glares at the bitch, who's standing in the doorway of her room, looking at them. Not the crocodile smirk, but like she's studying him.

It isn't until they're back in their room and Dean's on the can, doubled up with cramps that he realizes what he's done. He set the book down on the bed when he rolled the sword up again instead of putting it back under his jacket.

Nancy McGill has their dad's journal.

0000  
0000

**Unseen -- Mr. Mojo Risin'**

Spending time with John's journal is almost like spending time with John, his energy crisp on every page. Nancy turns the leaves gently, scanning scribbled notes that reflect more than twenty years spent researching the bizarre and uncanny. There's no organization to it; notes about Sumarian demonology are page-to-page with John's description of a "Nessie". A ritual for banishing kobalds appears between a sketch of some Native American cave drawings and an invocation in Hebrew (complete with phonetic rendering) for---

Nancy's eyes fix on John's jagged script. She reads the paragraphs carefully, then powers up her laptop to confirm the details.

It's ancient magic, and the references she consults all warn of the inherent dangers. The word "hubris" recurs frequently. Looking from the book to the results of the painstaking research she's done, housed in her own much tidier, better organized Book, Nancy is convinced that if she could only combine the two workings...

It's crazy.

No crazier than the rest of this mad plot, Nancy argues with herself. Her first priority, after all, is to get into Hell itself. Figuring that out took her a couple months; she's finally gotten a ritual which should, in theory, locate his soul, if that anthropology professor-slash-good-witch in Texas knows what she's talking about. There are still details to be ironed out there. She's proceeding under the premise that if he's in Hell, she'll find him. If she's wrong, it'll be one short-lived rescue attempt, that's for sure.

After she get in there, if she gets in there, she has to destroy the demon. Demon-Killer is a formidable weapon, but it's only as good as the hand that wields it. There's still ample room for failure. She may not survive the battle.

Then there's the matter of releasing John from Hell. The old working she's counting on for that needs a rag, a bone and a lock of hair---she has all three. There are documented cases of the cantrip being used successfully to reanimate hanging victims in the twelfth and thirteeth centuries; usually the victim wound up missing a finger or toe. She's adapting it to fit the circumstances---all she has to do is return John's spirit to the presence of these things, and Michael has agreed to be there to take him to the reward he's earned.

With all that can go wrong in the process, it would be wicked folly to complicate it further. Especially when all her sources agree that failure could leave him as badly off as he is now.

If it failed.

The thing is, the rag-bone-hair ritual will reanimate a body...which she doesn't have, of course. But the working John has documented would provide a body, and if she could fuse the two---

Nancy gnaws her lip and stares at the page, wishing she could ask John for advice. The drawback to the procedure he's outlined is, it animates a body without a spirit. If she was to place the relics inside the form...it would mean she'd have to return his spirit and animate the corpus almost simultaneously, perform all but the last phrase of the first ritual, all but the last phrase of the second, then the location ritual...assuming she returns successfully from the underworld, she'll conclude the rag-bone-hair spell and the other one before Michael can remove John's spirit.

For a long time, she sits there, thinking, debating with herself. Would resurrecting John be the right thing to do? Or would that count as double-crossing an angel?

_Five to one, baby  
One in five  
No one here gets out alive, now  
You get yours, baby  
I'll get mine  
Gonna make it, baby  
If we try_


	5. Nancy

**Seen -- Nancy McGill**

The world is bright and clear and white, and although it's fucking cold---Nancy hasn't been warm for months and she really hopes Hell is as hot as everyone always says---the postcard quality of the scene does a lot to restore her peace of mind. She slept fitfully, in between wrestling with her conscience about attempting to bring back John, but awakening, she feels optimistic. Not out of any foreknowledge, but because she has the Demon-Killer, and Michael has promised help. That's well ahead of where she was 24 hours ago.

Her first act is to pay a visit to the motel's front office and charm the desk clerk into letting her use the copy machine for a half hour. She can't very well keep John's journal, but there's enough precious information in there that Nancy isn't about to just hand it back to the boys without making a back-up copy.

Sam answers the door when she knocks, and she smiles at him and extends the volume. He looks relieved; she's a little surprised they haven't come knocking on her door before this, but then, where was she going to go in such crummy weather? She inquires solicitiously about Dean---poor kid didn't look too good last night, not that she's surprised---that crummy diner food on top of too many beers would turn anyone's stomach. Glad to hear he's resting, finally. She doesn't linger; the deep gray horizon suggests they're in for more snow pretty soon, and she has things to do first.

There's a tarp in the truck and a twenty-yard stretch of woods between the road and the nearest motel building, bony trunks sprouting skeletal branches limned with mounds of white.Nancy rigs a backdrop behind one of the trees with the old blue tarp. As long as she has time for practice, she'll keep trying...she's been at it for how many years? and she still can't land a knife in a target. She can hit the damn target, she just isn't able to wound it...

This morning's results are no exception; the closest she comes is shaving the bark a little on one side as a protectile topples past. She isn't using the whole set; it's easier to find just a few of them in the snow, which is gradually getting stomped down between her, the target tree and the tarp. Most often, they wind up sliding down the backdrop. A couple times they puncture it.

It's mortifying that John's boys witness her futile attempts as they saunter back from breakfast. "You're doing it wrong," Dean says, as if she doesn't know that. "Look, it's simple---" He plucks one of the knives from the open roll on her smaller duffle and flicks it at the target, where it hangs, quivering. "It's all in the wrist."

The boy is definitely his father's son. And, Nancy reminds herself through gritted teeth, it's a good lesson in humility. Although she's strongly tempted to discuss the probable grease content of his breakfast---he proved last night how suggestable he is---she bares her teeth in a smile and thanks him for the pointers. Not that he's making any sort of sincere attempt to be helpful---just as well; if it was irritating when John did it, it's even more exasperating coming from this punk kid.

Dean smirks and strolls away. Nancy flings a few more knives, fuming, knowing he's standing back there watching and snickering.

The crunch of booted feet walking through snow warns her, but this time it's Sam who approaches. "If you're gonna tell me it's all in the wrist," she says through gritted teeth, "keep in mind that I'm holding sharp, pointy objects."

"Uh, no," he says hastily. "No, I, uh, wanted to ask you about something."

Sure he did. Nancy's eyebrows go up and she regards him silently. The wheels are turning, he's trying to think of something to say that isn't going to piss her off.

"You said you used to ride with bikers?"

Nancy blinks, because that's the last question she expected. "Yeah, back when I was about your age." Not the happiest era of her life, but as a creative diversion, she gives Sam points. "A bunch of Hell's Angels wannabes called The Knights." The full name of the club had been The Knights of the Kingdom of the Damned; they'd been Goth long before anyone had coined the term. It's been two and a half decades, and she's done her best to forget those years; they hadn't ended well.

"So you probably spent a few nights hanging out in bars and pool halls."

What's he getting at? "A few? Hundreds. Maybe thousands. Why?"

"Playing pool, maybe some darts?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" she demands, staring at him. "Yes, I fucked up my life for a couple years of screwing around and I regret the hell out of it!" Sam flinches, and she takes a deep breath. "Yes, I shot some pool and threw some darts. So what?"

Sam nods at the knife she's been waving around. "Throw it like a dart."

"Excuse me?"

"Throw it like a dart," he repeats. "Don't put all that follow-through into it, you don't need it." She thinks about the motion involved in throwing darts, which she used to be decent at, and he's right, it's a different kind of form.

Like a dart, Nancy imagines, and lets it fly. And nails the tree dead center, not two inches from the blade Dean stuck in there. Sam's grin broadens, and she sends another knife into the slender trunk, and another.

"Sam," she says, around the lump in her throat. "I've been busting my ass at this for close to ten years now. You set me straight in a minute and a half. Thank you."

He smiles and shrugs. "It was nothing."

"Lawyer, my ass," she says, euphoric as she skips over to tug the knifes from the wood. "You ever go back to school, you ought to be a teacher. You'd be a good one."

He looks so aw-shucks embarassed that she's charmed. From all John's grumbling about his problem child, Nancy's expected some hostile punk with an attitude---more like his brother, in fact---but Sam is bright and has a smile so like his father's that it hurts. He's not the rebel she thought he'd be---he's actually a sweet young man---and so helpful.

Thinking of how she spent the previous evening, she starts a conversation with him---in Latin!---to see how he'll react, and to her delight, Sam goes along with her. They have a pleasant hour of correcting each other's pronunciation and arguing conjugation as Nancy consolidates her progress. He seems taken aback when she asks him if he believes in angels, but unlike his daddy, he's got an open mind on the subject.

There's not a damn thing wrong with her aim---never has been. That's one of the things that frustrated her so. Now that she's got the action she needs, Nancy works on distance, on throwing while she's in motion---trickier, but she's not doing too badly, and Sam is encouraging. He helps her retrieve the knives that miss the target---these scrawny little trees are only four or five inches across, she's bound to miss a few---and cheers her on when she makes a really good shot.

Practice goes so well that she's surprised when the first flurries drift down. Better go clean her gear and have a sandwich...her breakfast banana has definitely worn off. She thanks Sam again for his help and heads back to her room, smiling. There's something to be said for the satisfaction of achieving a goal...this is the first time in months she hasn't felt cold.

0000

0000

**Unseen -- Secrets and Memories**

Dean eases back around the corner of the building. Sam is keeping the McGill woman busy, so he strolls over to the door of her room, pulling the picks from his pocket with no more concern than if they were normal room keys. There's no one around to observe him as he opens the door and disappears inside.

There's not a lot to see. Her bedroll is stowed neatly beside the bed. Next to it is a well-worn duffle bag, half-empty, and Dean quickly begins rifling through it. He's not even sure what he's searching for, he only knows that he's never met anyone he distrusted so much on sight.

The clothes are more of what he's already seen her in: another pair of jeans, a couple more tee shirts. Socks, cheap underwear. A hairbrush, a toothbrush. No cosmetics or jewelry. One of the outer pockets gives him data he can use. Several envelopes, their postmarks months old, are addressed to Nancy McGill, Cassadaga, Florida---utility bills, nothing exciting there, but he makes a note of the address, rummages deeper. Damn it, she must have all the good stuff in the bag with her knives in it, because this is freaking useless.

There's a brown envelope, blank, and that's probably crap, too, but Dean's nothing if not thorough, so he slides the contents out onto the ugly motel bedspread.

His dad's face smiles up at him, and his breath catches. John has an arm loosely around Nancy's shoulders. They're sitting at a picnic table under a tree somwhere, and his dad smiles indulgently at something she's saying. He has fewer silver hairs than Dean's recent memories, and the laughing woman in the photo is prettier than the woman currently throwing knives at a defenseless tree. Her face is softer, and she's wearing something pink with lace at the neckline.

In a second picture, John and a younger man in overalls are peering into an engine compartment---John's pointing at something, and Dean knows that look on his face. It's the one that says, there's the trouble, and here's what we're gonna do about it. He has no clue who the redneck twerp in the picture is, but the guy doesn't know how lucky he is; Dean's furious that he shared that moment with John Winchester.

Dean clenches his fists at memories of a hundred afternoons spent hunkered over the Impala with his father, images scented with gasoline and sweat and overlaid with a soundtrack of classic rock. It's a sudden shock to recall that it wasn't all about hunting, that there were moments of quiet camaraderie that weren't fueled by vengeance and defying death.

He forces himself to look at the rest of it. A much-creased sheet of notebook paper, unfolded, bears the words "Merry Christmas. Keep practicing." in John's handwriting. There's a yellowed newspaper clipping about disturbances at a bed-and-breakfast in Savannah, a brochure from the same B & B, and notes about the place, also in the familiar scrawl, on the back of an advertising flyer addressed to her. Not exactly steamy love letters, but evidence that John had a secret life they hadn't suspected, and she was a part of it. It's like losing Dad all over again, and he has to struggle to dislodge a rock in the back of his throat.

There's a small bundle of blank cards held together with a brittle rubber band, and he investigates them. The top card has been turned to face the rest of the stack, but they all advertize the services of Nancy McGill, psychic. He takes one of the cards, sliding into his back pocket, and as he's replacing the rubber band, it disintegrates between his fingers. Well, hell. He carefully replaces the stack of cards in the envelope with the band wrapped around so maybe, if she notices, she'll think it snapped on its own. He steals a last look at John working on whatever car or truck it is---it's blue, clearly not any vehicle of theirs---and puts the scraps back into the envelope.

On the counter of the kitchette, a bunch of ripening bananas rests beside a large jar of peanut butter and two loaves of bread, one about half-gone. That's one way to avoid food poisoning, he thinks with grim humor. Dean wonders if he hawked a loogie into the peanut butter and stirred it up, if she'd notice. The idea brings a brief smile to his lips. Swapping spit with her in any way, shape or form...nah, better not.

Confident that he's erased every sign of his presence, Dean exits the room. He has a lot to think about. She claims to be a psychic? Interesting. He'd like to get her in the same room as Missouri Mosley, call her bluff... He stalks over to the corner of the building to see what Sam and his quarry are doing. He's annoyed to see his brother talking a mile a minute. God knows what family secrets he's spilling to that woman.

If she doesn't already know.

_Hello, I love you  
Won't you tell me your name?  
Hello, I love you  
Let me jump in your game _


	6. Sam 2

**Seen -- Sam Winchester**

Snowflakes are skirling down again as Sam strides toward the motel office. Dean disappeared some time after breakfast---Sam hopes he's not sick again---and Nancy's headed back to her room with her knives, saying she needs to wipe them down before they rust. Conversational Latin is something he hasn't practiced in years, and his brain is still translating bits of that extraordinary chat. Has she been following them around, somehow? Why else would she ask him if he believed in angels?

Since he and Dean clearly aren't heading out today, Sam figures this would be a good time to pay ahead on their bill. He's holding their bankroll, proceeds from the sale of Dad's truck, which is just as well; if they're gonna be here for another couple of days, cash is better than questionable credit cards.

A battered sedan pulls into the lot and parks near the office as he crosses the parking lot. Its engine bucks and chugs for a moment after it's turned off, and the man who climbs laborously from the driver's seat gives the impression that he's doing the same, or maybe he's just stiff from sitting too long and he's trying to shrug out the knots. Sam holds the office door for him, lets him tap the bell on the desk to summon the motel-keeper.

Bonnie---Sam learned her name during check-in yesterday, it hadn't seemed like a good idea for Dean to interact any more than he had to---comes out of the back room and smiles in Sam's direction. She shakes her head at the other guy, though. No vacancies, but there's a Best Western about forty minutes down the road, if he wants to call ahead and reserve a room, he can use her phone. The guy looks worn out, and Sam hates to think of him on the road in that shape. Still, it's not like he and Dean can share a room with Willy Loman, can they? Too many secrets, too much potential trouble.

The door opens again, and in comes Nancy. Dean's convinced she's bad news, but Sam's intrigued. Trying to picture her next to Dad---she barely comes up to his shoulder, so she probably came up to dad's chin...he stops. It isn't like he's ever going to get a chance to see them together, but his mind is turning the idea over, trying to see what it is about her that could've gotten the attention of an obsessed bastard like John Winchester.

"This lady might be checking out," says Bonnie, and Willie Loman looks like a sad-faced bassett hound who's just been offered a slice of bologna.

"Can I talk to you for a second?" Sam says to her impulsively, drawing her to the far end of the narrow room. Take care of two problems with one bullet, so to speak...

"What are you thinking?" she asks, still in Latin.

Well, that's one way to hold a private conversation in a small space. He replies in kind: "That man needs a room, and they're all occupied. If you're sleeping on the floor, why don't you come in with us and let him have your room?"

Nancy's eyebrows raise. She looks from Sam to the salesman and shrugs. "I'll be checking out," she says to Bonnie in plain English. "I just need to get my stuff together." She's reading his mind with her parting words, "Your brother's gonna love this."

After he's extended their stay and gets back to their room, Dean is pacing. "What were you telling her?" his brother demands suspiciously.

"Relax, dude. We were practicing Latin." Among other things. How to break the news...this is going to awkward.

Dean rolls his eyes. "And what were you conversing about? Us? Dad?"

Sam hesitates. "She asked me if I believed in angels."

"Did you tell her about---?"

"No! I didn't. She just asked me, out of the blue."

"What did you tell her?"

"I just said I'd never seen one that I knew of," Sam answers, but doesn't mention her response, which was 'You'd know it if you had. They're kind of hard to miss.'

"Did she happen to mention she's a psychic?" Dean shoves a card under his nose, advertising the services of Nancy McGill, psychic, of Cassadaga, Florida.

"Huh? Where did you get that?"

"While you were busy fraternizing, I searched her room." It's a totally Dean thing for him to do, but if he was sloppy about it, that's gonna make the next day or so beyond awkward. Shit.

"Great," says Sam, with a grimace. "Tell her it was all your idea, okay?" Dean gives him look that says no way he's gonna give it up, and his younger brother bites the bullet. "While I was renewing our room, I talked her into giving her room to some guy who was stranded. I told her she could bunk with us."

"You what?" Dean barks as there's a knock on the door. He glares at it, then at Sam. "Remind me to kick your ass later."

Five minutes later, Dean's humming Metallica and channel surfing, pushing the button every other note, glaring at the TV like it's possessed. Nancy spreads her bedroll in the space between the front window and Sam's bed, and he has a question for her. "Can I ask you something?"

"Because a mattress is too soft," she answers, glancing up at him

"That wasn't the question." The blonde sits back on her heels, regards him quietly. "Why did you ask me before if I believed in angels?" The ever-shifting channel pauses on a news broadcast, an announcer droning on about blizzard conditions. Dean wants to know what brought that on, too.

"Just curious," she says, tilting her head as she looks at him. "I already know your daddy's views on the subject. I wondered what your thoughts were."

Dean gives a short shake of his head as Sam starts to stammer something. Nancy waits, a polite expression on her face---then Sam realizes she isn't looking at either of them---her attention is on the TV, where Dean's face is shown, large as life. "---additional murder charges from the attempted bank robbery. Last seen driving a black 1967 Chevrolet Impala, Winchester is considered extremely dangerous. The FBI has set up a hotline---"

Of course, now the remote doesn't want to work, and Dean finally jumps up from the bed to punch the off-button, just as the station segues into a commercial for Wild Willie's Used Cars. The cat is well and truly out of the bag. Sam isn't sure whether it's better to know that she knows, or not to know, but she knows that they know, so...awkward isn't the word for it.

"Bank robbery?" she drawls. "Seems to me that's a couple of steps up from hustling pool for gas money. Care to tell me what really happened?"

"There were these robberies," Sam begins, "and we saw a pattern---" He explains what happened, with occasional comments from Dean, who's watching Nancy closely as she listens. By the time he's through, she's staring at Sam with her mouth hanging open.

"I don't know what to say," she says finally. "That's the damnedest thing I've heard lately, and that's saying something."

"What are you going to do?" Dean demands. The desperate look on his face gives Sam pause. His brother has been carrying a heavy load already; he hopes that Nancy isn't going to be the one who breaks him.

"Do? I don't reckon I'm gonna do anything. You boys have your own road to travel, and I have mine." For a moment, her expression is far-away. "Just remember, my door is always open to you. I told your daddy he was welcome to bring you along for a visit anytime, and I stand by that."

"Thanks, but you could get into trouble, helping us," Sam tells her.

"I'm no stranger to trouble...just not on quite that scale." Her tone is a little lighter; she's trying to break the tension that's settled over the room.

"You're not going to turn us in?"

Instead of answering Dean with a yes or no, Nancy reaches into the top duffle, the one on top of the bag with clothes, the ones she keeps her knives in. She produces a small Bible, and places her hand upon it. "I solemnly swear that I mean you no harm, and that I have no intention whatever of contacting the FBI or any other branch of law enforcement. Furthermore, I am wholely sincere in extending my hospitality. My door is always open to you. So help me God." She returns the book to its place as they regard her, slack-jawed at the performance. "I'm no oath-breaker," she says quietly. "You boys have nothing to fear from me."

"Is that what you said to Steve Sweeney?"

"Dean! Dude, give it a rest---"

Nancy sighs. "Look, I helped Sweeney out with a little problem he was having, and the deal was, he was going to give me the sword in return. Instead, he weaseled on me. I ended up spending three weeks chasing his sorry ass all over half the damn country, and there's a limit to how far I'm willing to suffer fools. Now, I've already told you, I don't mean you boys any harm, so let's just simmer down some. We're gonna be here for a while, we might as well make nice, okay?"

"We don't want trouble either," Sam assures her, flashing a warning look at his brother.

"Good." She smiles and reaches for the brown paper sack she brought with her. "I'm gonna have some lunch, anybody else hungry?" The bag yields an economy-size jar of generic peanut butter and part of a loaf of bread. In a moment, she's got an old butter knife busy spreading the gooey goodness on a slice of whole wheat bread. She looks from Sam to Dean, cracks a smile and asks, "You sure? It's guaranteed loogie-free."

0000

0000 

**Unseen -- Nightmares and Hellscapes**

The brothers Winchester are sitting at their accomodation's small table over a deck of cards while Nancy's alledgedly taking a nap. Neither of them is paying attention to what's in his hand; instead, they're conversing in low tones, carefully modulated not to carry across the room to the woman who may be playing possum.

"It's a coincidence," Sam says uneasily, thinking of her well-timed question about angels. "I mean, you didn't stand there over the jar clearing your throat, did you?"

"That's what's so damn creepy," Dean answers. "What if she's some kind of mind reader? What if..." His voice drops even lower, and he leans forward, "she's working for the other side?"

"The demon?" his brother says out loud, and Dean shushes him, shooting a glance at the foot of the bedroll that's visible past the end of the bed.

Within the bedroll, images flicker behind Nancy's closed eyelids. Everything is in readiness. She's cast the outer circle with the astrological symbols that represent John's natal chart; pennants coded to the colors of the planets flutter from stakes driven at intervals signifying various houses. Within the inner circle, a human-shaped repository holds the relics she's painstakingly procured. The hair and bone are buried within the thing's chest cavity, while the old plain shirt modestly veils its loins.

With her ceremonial dagger in one hand, she holds up the torn, stiffened tee and proclaims her intention: to locate the individual whose blood this is. With one swift movement, she places the shirt on the ground and drives the atheme through one of the bloodstains, pinning it to the earth.

Outside the bigger circle, there's a sudden gout of steam, as if all moisture has been sucked from the soil. The grass in the innermost circle withers between one heartbeat and the next, the earth itself seeming to gasp with pain, a tortured sound that rises in pitch as a cleft opens in the circle, slashing upward from the hilt of the atheme and rending the air.

All hell has broken loose, she thinks, and wonders, despairing, if she can possibly get it back again. This is what she's been working toward---she can't turn back now. Each step into the abyss takes her an eternity away from the blue sky and sanity. Each breath is tainted by the reek of carrion, of souls rotten with putridness. Shrieking agony assaults her on every side as she slogs through the muck of despair.

There's John.

How pitiful he looks---his expression is vacant. The familiar sparkle doesn't lighten his hazel eyes. What have they done, what's wrong with him? "We've got to get you out of here," she says, aghast at how passive he is. Never mind killing the Demon; it's a fool's errand, she can't possibly defeat It on It's own ground.

"Here, you hold this---" She hands Demon-Killer to John, and he smiles that rare, beautiful smile. Hope rises in her; he's bad off, but he'll bounce back, once she gets him out of this terrible place. Nancy takes his other hand; it burns as if he's feverish. "Let me help you---" Then there's a look of horror on his face, and she wheels, almost in time to avoid the blade that sinks into her left shoulder.

Nancy has only the Bowie knife, and It has a great axe that has already wounded her badly. John just stands there, watching their combat, swaying on his feet, barely able to hold Demon-Killer, much less come to her aid.

It's the sight of John, helpless---John, who has never been helpless, John, who has always been strong and decisive---that rouses her. This evil son-of-a-bitch isn't going to get off that easy! "If I have to die, I'm gonna die last," she murmurs, and takes a belly wound getting close enough to drive the Bowie into the Demon's gut and wrench it upward. She draws back and plunges the old knife in again, this time into Its black, black heart.

A gush of foul ichor bubbles from Its mouth, and It crumples into a heap and dies.

She's going to die now, but at least John's safe. He can take the Demon-Killer and get out of here. Nancy looks over---he hasn't moved. "It's dead, John, I killed it for you," she says to him, feeling weaker by the heartbeat. "You can rest in peace, now."

"Thank you," he says, and there's something frightening about his smile. Nancy looks back at the corpse, and she's horrified to see John lying there, eyes staring at her blankly, the Bowie he gave her long ago still protruding from his chest.

When she looks again, the Demon holds Demon-Killer and laughes malevolently. "This thing has killed enough of my kind," It says. "How thoughtful of you to bring it to me. And to dispatch my enemy in the process---thank you so much!"

Nancy screams, sitting bolt upright in her bedroll. For a moment, she's disoriented. What has she done? How could she have gone through so much to get Demon-Killer only to hand it over to that fiend? And to mistake that creature for John---! How could it happen? "No," she says out loud, remembering the charm on the sword's hilt. "It wouldn't work. The medal would burn It."

"Nancy? What's wrong?" Sam Winchester leans over her.

"It was just a nightmare," she tells him and tries to smile, with limited success. She's not wounded, she's not dying, she hasn't killed his father...

_Come on, people better climb on board  
Come on, baby, now we're going home  
Ship of fools, ship of fools  
_


	7. Dean 2

Seen -- Dean Winchester

"Sam, I have nothing against pistachio, but it is entirely too damn cold for ice cream."

Dean's attention leaves the game of solitaire he has set out on the lime green formica table in front of him. The TV reception died during the night, and they've spent today so far avoiding the subject of the FBI. Sam hasn't said anything about pistachio---hasn't said anything at all in at least an hour. He's stretched out on his bed, nose buried in a Tony Hillerman mystery, and his mouth dropped open at Nancy's comment.

"How---how did you---?"

"Damn, Sam, how could I not? Any louder, and it'd be stereo." Nancy sits cross-legged on the floor, a loose-leaf notebook open across her knees. She's been rereading the same couple of pages all afternoon, her lips moving silently as if trying to commit something to memory.

"You can hear what I'm thinking?"

"Not hear, exactly...I get impressions of things, sometimes...this was cold and tasted like pistachio." Sam still gapes at Nancy, while Dean uneasily hopes she can't read his mind. "It was summer. You were supposed to be somewhere else, but you never had a granddad, and the old guy who ran the ice cream stand told stories about the old country and you thought he was cool, so you lied about it."

"I never told anybody about that!" Sam stammers. "But I was---I just---" He glances down at the book and back at Nancy, looking stunned. "Wow."

"When was this?" Dean demands, staring at his brother.

"The summer I was eleven," Sam confesses. "We were in upstate New York for like, six weeks. An old Italian guy in town had an ice cream stand, and he let me help out, washing up and stuff, and I could have all the ice cream I wanted. You were running after some debutante chick at that fancy yacht club, and Dad was chasing after something in the woods that kept attacking hikers. I made up some crap about a summer youth program at the rec center, and you guys bought it." He scowls. "I could've painted myself bright green and danced around in feathers and nobody would've noticed."

"Yeah, now I remember. You packed on twenty pounds that summer and when school started, Dad got you in serious training." All that calcium must've been great for Sammy's bones, though---he'd started growing UP after that.

"So what's _he_ thinking?" Sam challenges their visitor, hiking his thumb at his brother.

"I have no idea," Nancy says, and Dean breathes a sigh of relief. He's been wondering if they can take the McGill woman at her word not to inform on them, or if it would be a good idea to tie her to the bed before they depart...which would be pretty certain to piss her off if she wasn't planning to rat them out. "He's a real quiet thinker, kind of like your Daddy. Some people, they think so loud, it's like being stuck in traffic next to somebody with those monster speakers that shake all the windows for a block around." She smiles in Dean's direction. "Mostly, what I've had from you is a little static, which is real restful."

"But if you try, can you?" persists Sam.

"Sam, that would be rude," she says firmly. "If I can hear something---and most of the time, I wish I couldn't, it's worse than elevator music, that's one thing. Or if someone wants to know about something and asks for my help, I'll try to get an answer for them. But mostly? I try to mind my own business."

"Can you control it?" There's a note of hope in Sam's voice.

"It's kind of like having a radio. Sometimes the reception is real clear, sometimes it fades in and out, and any way you look at it, I pretty much have to take what I can get as far as tunes go. I'm lucky if the station comes through for me."

"You mean, like a request line?" quips Dean. "I want to hear some AC-DC."

"More like, tuning in rock and roll instead of Public Radio." She eyes their puzzled expressions. "You take our friend Mr. Sweeney, for example. The man has a real problem with poltergeists. I caught an inkling that he had some trouble in Memphis a couple years back. Mind you, if he hadn't tried to weasel out on his sworn oath, the subject would never have come up...you boys helped him out, didn't you? Another poltergeist? Uh-huh. Back there in that bar, he was fretting about the weather...not consciously, but he knew there was a storm coming, and that whole business in Memphis was like background music. It gave me what I needed to straighten him out. Could've just as easy been his drunken cow-tipping adventures in high school."

"Can you turn it off? Make it stop?" The McGill woman may be a blonde, but she's not dumb. She picks up that Sam's question is more than curiosity and shakes her head regretfully.

"I tried ignoring it after Nona died. Spent about ten years convincing myself that it was all a bunch of over-active imagination...but that didn't work out so good." She's gazing at the stripes on the wallpaper as if a pattern that looks like a giant blue-on-blue bar code has the answer to everything.

"Who's this Nona person?" asks Dean, unenlightened. "Was it something you could've done something about?"

Nancy winces. "That's just it," she replies after a moment. "I felt like I should've known. Nona was my grandmother, my mother's mother. She had the Sight, and she taught me a lot, from when I was real little. When I was fourteen, she died from a bad reaction to a flu shot, and I felt like I should've known something was going to happen, I should've stopped her. Without Nona, I just...shut down. The rest of my family didn't care she was gone. All Ma wanted to how was, how soon could she sell her house, and how much was it worth?"

Sam looks distressed and even Dean thinks that sounds pretty cold.

"I left there without much more than the clothes on my back as soon as I graduated high school," she continues, still tracking on the wallpaper. "I got a job in a diner for a while, then I got swept off my feet by one of those bikers you wanted to know about. I can't even talk about how wrong that all went." Her voice trembles. "In the end, we were holed up in Daytona Beach with a local club. One morning, I woke up real early before anybody else and grabbed my stuff in a panic and got the hell out of there. I didn't know why I was doing it, I just did it. I was down to the end of the block when a bunch of law enforcement types drove right past me and surrounded the place. The way I figure it, I missed being arrested with the rest of them by about four minutes."

"Holy shit," Dean blurts, impressed in spite of himself. "I could use some of that mojo."

"After that, I stopped trying to pretend I was blind and deaf to a lot of what was going on around me. I started doing readings at an herb shop, worked my way up to a storefront of my own a couple years later, and then I inherited my house...which came as a total surprise to me, but I never said I knew everything."

Sam's not saying anything, probably trying to spare Nancy's feelings, but this is as good an opening as Dean's going to have to get answers. "When did you hook up with our dad?" Dean wants to know.

There's a crooked smile on her thin face. "Funny thing about that. I hadn't been to Bike Week on purpose in about ten years, but that day, I went and caught a ride with my neighbor. Just something telling me I needed to, the same way it told me to get out of that house ten years before. I didn't know why, but I went anyhow, and I walked around for hours. Then out of the blue, I had the thought that I oughta have a drink. So, I went into the nearest bar, and this fella turned around all of a sudden and spilled his beer all over me...and that was Big John."

"Big John?" Dean can't help it; he grins, trying to imagine his dad's expression at a nickname like that.

"Oh, that came on the radio one night while he was visiting," she says when he asks about it. "And I teased him about it, but your daddy was like Big John in the song---tough and strong and willing to sacrifice himself for others, so it stuck, kind of a private joke.

The wistful look on her face tells the story. "You _were _sleeping with him!"

"Dean!" his brother yelps. "You can't just---"

But Nancy McGill doesn't need Sam to defend her. Dean gets the crocodile smile again. "That's a rather personal question, which I believe falls into the category of minding your own damn business. Sort of like you and Mrs. Olsen."

That happened while Sam was at Stanford, so he knows she didn't hear it from his brother, and Dad had been a couple states away at the time, working another job and didn't get briefed on that particular extracurricular activity. "Okay, okay!" Dean says hastily, "No need to get personal!"

He's starting to believe it: maybe she really is psychic.

* * *

Unseen -- Sing a Song of Angels

Over the years, Nancy McGill has resigned herself to making departures without farewells. From the day she left her family at age eighteen, it's happened again and again. The snow stopped around sundown---or what would've been sundown, if it wasn't for the remains of the storm. Now, she's rolled up her bedding and gathered up her things, and she's almost ready to leave the Winchester brothers asleep in their beds. It's five a.m., and the snowplow went past on the highway just a few minutes ago. She hums Nona's melody as she moves around. Singing---especially her singing---would be bound to wake them up, but the tune is comforting, and her mind supplies the words as she softly hums: "_When at night I go to sleep, fourteen angels watch do keep...Two my head are guarding, two my feet are guiding..."_

John's sons...Nancy's glad to finally have had a chance to meet them, to see the fine young men her lover has left behind. There's a lot of their father in both of them: Dean has that self-contained core, all weapons and tactics and worrying about the next battle...Sam is more spontaneous; she sees in him the light-hearted self that John denied---then wonders if any of that is true, because Dean is weary of fighting, and Sam harbors a shadow in his heart. _"Two are on my right hand, two are on my left hand..."_

Yesterday was a blend of joy and pain. Sam's questions about her psychic life dredged up memories she's carefully kept out of sight for so long: Nona, her birth family, running with the Knights... Her hysterectomy scar burns with remembered pain, and she thinks bitterly, not for the first time, that if things had been different, if she hadn't ruined herself all those years ago, there might be another Winchester son to carry on John's name. It's tempting to think of staying with these two a while longer, to learn more about them, but no. _"Two who warmly cover, two who o'er me hover. Two to whom 'tis given to guide my steps to heaven..."_

They don't need her tagging along. They have enough to contend with; the FBI won't buy tales of a shape-shifter as a murder defense. The Impala is a fine classic automobile---which doesn't exactly fade into the woodwork. Sooner or later, some car buff who watches America's Most Wanted will pick up the phone and they'll wind up in a place where all the salt lines in the world won't protect them from the evil there.

In her smaller duffle, the one that holds her journal and throwing knives and Demon-Killer, there's a little jar that holds an assortment of charms and trinkets and medals. She's picked two of them to leave as parting gifts for Sam and Dean, and she busies herself with a pair of needle-nosed pliers, fastening jump rings to zipper pulls. There has to be something else she can do to help them, Nancy thinks, something more concrete than prayers and talismans. _  
_  
Faith is a wonderful thing, but there are times when you have to back it up with good works. But what can she do? She doesn't have much money, and money alone wouldn't solve their problems. She has Demon-Killer, which she's going to need soon enough. All she has is...

Nancy smiles. Well, of course. She has the ideal means to assist them, and it shouldn't set her own plans back a bit.

"Blessed be," she murmurs as she steps over the salt line and lets herself quietly out of the room. Dean's going to be furious, and he doesn't like her anyway. He may come around eventually, but today isn't going to be that day, that might as well be carved in stone. Her name is going to be mud until common sense dawns on them.

The Impala starts right up; she remembers the other times she rode in it, with John at the wheel. She's leaving his boys with the truck, a vehicle the FBI knows nothing about, and when she gets pulled over, she can feign ignorance. If there's anything Nancy is good at, it's misdirecting with the truth. Meanwhile, they'll be in her prayers. And maybe, just maybe, if all goes well with her plans, she'll answer one of theirs.

Fourteen angels? Times two Winchesters is twenty-eight---a lot of angels for one little motel room. Nancy smiles as she eases the big car out onto the newly plowed highway. If anyone needs upwards of two dozen angels to keep an eye on them, it's that pair!

In the motel room, the brothers don't even know she's gone. They're both sleeping soundly, surrounded by angels.

_  
Don't ya love her madly  
Wanna be her daddy  
Don't ya love her face  
Don't ya love her as she's walkin' out the door  
Like she did one thousand times before... _

The End...

* * *

Well, the end of this arc, anyway. There is certainly more to the story of Nancy's quest to redeem John, not to mention what happens when Dean finds out the Impala is gone, but the double-chapter, side-of-The-Doors format has gotten very confining, so it's time for a change. Canon? What's that? 


End file.
